


Sorrows Into Strangers

by orphan_account



Series: A Basketful of First-Times [9]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Feels, Baby Luke, Bittersweet Ending, Breaking Celibacy Vows, Complicated Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Emotionally Repressed, Fictional Religion & Theology, First Time, Forbidden Love, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gentle Kissing, Gentleness, M/M, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Non-Penetrative Sex, Physiology, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prompt Fic, Qui-Gon Jinn Lives, Sexual Dysfunction, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:35:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21763066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Anakin has fallen. The Jedi are no more. A Master takes a fugitive--no more than a baby--into exile, and a Knight--with his entire world, his faith, shattered--seeks to lose himself among the stars. Forever.Their last shuttle-ride together, sequestered with the spark of hope, is a final chance to make amends. To affirm that, however fleetingly and however imperfectly-so, there is, within the Darkness, Light.Or: "Oh, forget about the sun;he’s forgotten us by now.Kiss me, so I remember how.We’ll turn these sorrows into strangers . . . "
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: A Basketful of First-Times [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876582
Comments: 12
Kudos: 57
Collections: Master Apprentice Archive





	Sorrows Into Strangers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Black_Teapot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Teapot/gifts).



> > What would you think of a first-time happening when they're both older? Like Master Jedi Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon ? Maybe near RotS in the chronology. Like two men who never had the opportunity or the bravery to try something together (It wasn't really possible with Anakin always nearby as a Padawan).
> 
> Such was Black_Teapot's prompt to me at the end of ["The Call Of Things Discarded"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21652648) when I begged shamelessly for first-time prompts if anyone had one.
> 
> And here we are. :D
> 
> Black_Teapot, thank you so, so much for the prompt; I really appreciate it and hope that it's a bit of what you were hoping for. :) (I'm also sorry that this is posted a bit later than I'd intended.)
> 
> I must confess that I've never written a "Qui-Gon Lives!" AU, so this was fun. And heartbreaking as hell. I'd meant for it to be happy or something, but? Damn? Ow?
> 
> Physiological fun: getting an erection, orgasm and ejaculation are often interrelated, but they're not inextricable. I think the "dry orgasm" is the best-known instance of this, but it's also possible to have an orgasm (dry or otherwise) without an erection. 
> 
> So now that sex ed's out of the way . . .
> 
> The title and "Or" are from Gregory Alan Isakov's ["Astronaut"](https://gregoryalanisakov.com/songs/astronaut).
> 
> Comments are ever and always appreciated; thank you so much for reading and I do hope you enjoy! <3

For a brief moment, there is silence.

True enough, Luke Skywalker might shine like a beacon in the Darkness—the last of the Light—but he is still a newborn, and Obi-Wan isn’t sure when he’s last had a decent night’s sleep. Not that his sleepless nights began with Luke—the carousel of nightmares has simply gained, over the years, new glittering jewels to flash before his eyes, new spinning beasts and monsters: Geonosis, the war, Grievous, Cody's betrayal and the desecrated Temple . . . Mustafar . . . Phantoms flicker in and out of view at the corners of his sight, lurking in the shadows—the dead cry out with severed tongues—

He shakes his head, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he rocks the child in his arms, quietly offering to Luke all the solace and peace and sleep he can never find himself: energy, images, warmth through the Force. He wonders if the child knows his mother’s dead. Perhaps his father, too.

_Visage twisted as much with pure hatred as excruciating pain, Anakin snarls up at him from the banks of the lava-flow—the Chosen One—once and now no more—_

_And screaming as cloth and flesh caught flame and—_

Silence.

And for once he almost wishes Luke would wake and cry and give him _something_ with which to occupy himself, if not his mind: powdered formula to mix or a nappy to change or—

“You should sleep when he does.”

Soft, the voice—soft and so-long unheard that it catches Obi-Wan off-guard. He pivots on his heel, instinctively clutching the child closer to his breast: the familiar silhouette in the doorway is but half-familiar now. Much time has passed, and many things have changed, and Qui-Gon is as good a stranger. Perhaps they both are so—strangers to each other. Ghosts. Passing each other as if unseen, neither touching nor saying a word . . .

“But I know you don’t sleep at all these days.”

Luke frets in his arms and Obi-Wan half-hums a tuneless song, something minor, something like a dirge. He cannot bear to look his former Master in the eyes. Thirteen years have driven a wedge between them—the war ever-widening the chasm—until at most each had become in the other’s sight a shadowed figure lost to the horizon.

The duel with the Sith Lord had, for however brief a moment, solidified their bond, fractured and cracked by Qui-Gon’s insistence on training Anakin. But after the battle of Naboo . . . it needn’t take a Master to have seen then that _something_ between them had been irreparably broken. Obi-Wan wasn’t ready for the Trials, nor was Qui-Gon ready for a Padawan such as Anakin Skywalker. Not entirely. No one _could_ be. But such was their path . . . Fated? Chosen for them? Or ill-chosen of their own accord?

And so Obi-Wan had gone on to tread where his Master never dared—to earn himself a seat on the Council, to become a General in the ill-fated war, and to carry with him always the shattered pieces of what his life, once, had been—and all his secret hopes—and all the things it could never and can never be.

Qui-Gon himself had tried in vain to train the boy who so readily tapped into Darkness just as easily as Light. To heal the wounds and instill in Anakin a sense not of grandiose destiny but servitude. But Master Yoda had been right—there was much fear in him, and as the years went on fear fed into anger, into arrogance, into . . . something that Qui-Gon couldn’t put his finger on. But the boy he trained was gone, become secretive and prone to rage and outbursts and aggression such as was befitting of no Jedi Knight. Far more than Obi-Wan—who’d had his own battles with anger, fear, to face—he reminded Qui-Gon of Xanatos, and perhaps that had been the older man’s undoing: perhaps it was his own fear in turn which—

The severance of their tenure as Master and apprentice came with the war, as all things did: the war changed everyone. Qui-Gon had looked with ill-disguised disgust at the both the Senate and the Council, with their bickering and bureaucracy; in time—against the Council’s dictate—he became a conscientious objector. He moved through the battlefields garbed as a Knight but with no lightsaber at his side, tending to the sick, closing the eyes of the dead, bringing food and medicine to all the collateral billions on whose doorstep fell the war.

Anakin couldn’t understand why Qui-Gon wouldn’t fight. He heard the call to war and embraced it like a friend. Even before the braid was cut he’d found himself at the side of General Kenobi far more than his own Master.

And so Qui-Gon found himself, for the first time in twenty years, alone.

He had given Anakin his everything, and he knew in his heart that it hadn’t been enough. Worse yet, he hadn’t seen the stealth with which the Chancellor—now Emperor—had slipped his way into Anakin Skywalker’s heart—into his _head_. Had broken him.

But so it was, and now—

And now—

_The faces of dead children stare up at him with glassy eyes; these dear innocents were not lost to war but younglings in the Temple slaughtered, slaughtered by a blade of light on sacred ground—_

Too late. He’d been too late. And—

It was his fault. All of it. Blind faith, blind hope, the song of his heart leading him more than his head—even Obi-Wan had known it, all those years ago, and he’d dismissed it as mere jealousy and chastised him and all—and now—for what? For what? The Order’s dead. The Force is silent, a maelstrom of shockwaves and Darkness. Yoda has fled into exile—as must they all—the three of them, last remnants of the shattered Order—

Qui-Gon realizes he’s shaking, draws a breath: slowly, gently. The shuttle’s air is stale, too cold; half-dimmed lights flare far too brightly and bore into his skull and he closes his eyes, flinging himself into the refuge of the darkness.

“You don’t sleep much either, Master.”

Soft, the answer: softer still the honorific that Obi-Wan has never forgotten: he could call Qui-Gon nothing else. But it elicits a sharp inhalation, a taste of bitterness, a shock of pain through his chest that wraps as a vice about his ribs. Only dimly does he register the closing of Luke’s hand about his finger, or the child’s sharp-edged cry—as if he cries not for himself but the man who cradles him, who’s sworn his life to him—

_Padmé’s birthing-cries and her dying breath given fitfully to the promise that there was still good in Anakin and Anakin screaming and the bloody child in his arms and even from atop the rise he can smell the charring flesh and blood and—_

“Obi-Wan.”

A step, a glance unseen but felt, and Qui-Gon’s hand is laid against his own, the one Luke obstinately holds. It does not go unnoticed that the older man trembles, that tremors wrack Obi-Wan’s own frame, that they are both standing there shivering and the sole source of calm between them is the boy. The spark. The hope.

And Obi-Wan looks up at last, looks into that face he knows better than his own (he can’t stand to look at himself in mirrors or windows anymore, but oh, he still dreams of Qui-Gon often). But now hair yet kept long is grey: a dull, tired shade of pewter like a leaden-heavy sky full of spinning clouds, torrential rain. Qui-Gon has more wrinkles, too, that dance through the course of his half-trimmed beard.

And his eyes—

“He has his father’s eyes.”

Almost a whisper, low and hoarse and torn from a throat taut with unspeakable, unbearable grief.

Obi-Wan clenches his jaw, shifting with a swift and sharp motion that puts a foot between them. In the shuttle such distance is as much as they can get, but it may as well be lightyears. Qui-Gon doesn’t know that Vader's still—

And Qui-Gon looks with nothing but sorrow upon his former Padawan: all flaxen hair and beard (where has the young man gone? There is no braid for him to tangle in his hands, not anymore) and anguish and oh, those cerulean eyes, white-rimmed—

Desperation seizes him and he reaches for the bond that hasn’t been for thirteen years and—

Nothing.

Silence.

Of course there is silence. Even the Force is dumb with grief.

And so he says nothing, lets Obi-Wan brush brusquely past him to the cramped sleeping quarters; at length he darkens the shuttle to nothing but runner-lights, as if a mockery of night, and follows in the Jedi Master’s wake. Hoisting himself up into the topmost bunk, he hisses through clenched teeth in pain as aging joints flare hot and bright.

* * *

Obi-Wan listens as Qui-Gon settles for the night; the intervening years have granted him a restiveness that Obi-Wan had never known: now the former twists and turns and only after quite some time drops off, his breathing sharp and shallow.

Beside him, next to the lower bunk, is a makeshift bassinet crafted from an old footlocker lined with his and Qui-Gon’s robes. Luke sleeps on, despite the disturbance, and Obi-Wan turns his attention to the greater disturbance in the Force.

There’s so much _noise_ —some of it the now-familiar shadows, some the whispers of the dead. But there’s also something else, and he’s beginning to understand what it is: that Qui-Gon is all but obfuscating his presence in the Force—but more than that—as if it’s not a matter of merely not wanting to be found but—

As if he wants to disappear.

And it strikes Obi-Wan as he considers this with mounting uncertainty how much Qui-Gon has lost.

And how these few days to Tatooine might well be their last together—it will be far too dangerous to keep in any sort of contact—and Qui-Gon has always been a wanderer—

Slowly he exhales, realizing that for the first time in his life he will really lose his Master.

Because for whatever distance was struck between them, Qui-Gon had always been _there_ , had always been more than memory or dream: had been a face he would see in the Temple, or sometimes during the war; they rarely spoke, but a glimpse, a glance, was enough. Many things were lost but still, still something remained—how his heart quickened whenever he saw Qui-Gon in the field, without his lightsaber, blaster fire raining down about his head—or how beautiful he looked as his hair grew pewter-grey and how Obi-Wan had wished that he could trace each new line and wrinkle with his fingertip—

How despite everything Qui-Gon had always been so full of _life_.

And now this . . . absence . . . in the Force . . .

It hurts, almost physically, ringing true of too much—something impossible to bear that he knows too well himself—but Obi-Wan refuses to simply let the shuttle voyage pass and Qui-Gon to vanish to the stars and to know that he did nothing, in the end.

* * *

_< Master.>_

A drop of water, nothing more: inconspicuous, silent, sweet as rain. Qui-Gon rouses himself to consciousness, if loathe to do so, for surely it’s only in his dreams that—

A touch at his shoulder—hesitant—the faintest playing of motion against the tangled tresses of his hair.

_< Master?>_

In the hollow half-night he turns at last, blinking, finding Obi-Wan little more than a silhouette, but those cerulean eyes are bright and burning and so unspeakably gentle that Qui-Gon has to catch his breath and remember what it is to breathe. Against the backdrop of the Force in all its Darkness now are subtle eddies, little ripplings of Light, as if Obi-Wan has set something on the surface of those sacred waters and sent it floating to him, hoping it might find its course.

_< Padawan.>_

He speaks the word as well, the syllables thick and unwieldy, full of bitterness and blood and bile: he is not a Master anymore, hardly a Jedi—

But he looks at Obi-Wan and can call him nothing else.

And the weight of all between them washes over him and he knows he will never again be able to look Obi-Wan directly in the eyes.

Gently Qui-Gon’s hand is taken, and he lets himself be guided from the bunk; barren, the shuttle’s durasteel floor is cold beneath his feet; Obi-Wan’s insisted that they keep the shuttle cold, bundling Luke up, as if he can’t bear any modicum of heat—

_< This isn’t your fault, Master.>_

Qui-Gon sinks into the lower bunk with hunched shoulders, bowed head: partly for his stature, and partly because it feels as if his body is nothing but weariness: no flesh, no bones, just an aching, empty, all-pervasive exhaustion that will devour him. He feels Obi-Wan sit down at his side, perched at the edge of the austere plasteel slab, tension and misery pouring from him, tangibly. Qui-Gon doesn’t need to reach for the Force—for the bond that he’d thought so long severed—to gather such.

(No—more than that—destroyed—)

He purses his lips, eyes closed.

Obi-Wan has suffered, too . . .

And for these last days of theirs together, will this be how he remembers them? Or can he struggle yet for one final shred of peace in his life—can he make amends for all he’s done to this one man, at least? This one man for whom he’d give his life? This one man who stayed with him in shadows and dreams and memory? His heart ached every time he heard tales spun of General Kenobi, the Negotiator, who could stop a war with a word long ere he ever drew his blade—the Master of Soresu, though Force forbid he faced Grievous, the Jedi-Killer, all alone—

Never in the war had Qui-Gon wished to take up his blade again moreso than then.

Or so he thought.

Until Obi-Wan was sent to Mustafar and—

 _< I should have been there.> _Hands clenched into shaking fists. Qui-Gon stares down at them in disbelief, realizes his whole body’s shaking, reaches for the still and calm center of his being and finds it shattered, like all the galaxy, like all his hopes, his dreams, his faith. His fears, meanwhile, have been assembled from the scattered pieces, and where all else used to reflect the Light now there is only Darkness.

But for the sleeping child, and the Master at his side.

_< I should have been there when you faced Anakin. I could have reasoned with him. I could have turned him back, I promise you . . . >_

Obi-Wan’s voice is low and sorrow-laden; there is no anger, no bitterness, no hate. “Master . . . if you’d been on Mustafar . . . ” He shakes his head, slowly, lets the thought trail off.

_Sky-blue eyes cast corrupted gold—the untold, unleashed power of the Dark Side—_

_Anakin was gone. Consumed by Darth Vader._

Far better, perhaps, far more a mercy, that Qui-Gon be spared the reality of it. That he have one hope left to cling to, if only the delusion that he could have saved his former Padawan.

And something about that twists in Obi-Wan’s gut: the Qui-Gon he knew would never have found such comfort in savage mercies—but the galaxy has become a far more savage place. And these days and these moments are not for such discussions, what-might-have-beens: what is here and now is all they have.

Without thinking he begins to comb his fingertips through silvered hair, slowly, working out the knots and remembering when once it was soft and fine; now it’s thick and slick with grease, as if unwashed for many days. Qui-Gon sighs, and in time Obi-Wan begins to feel the older man relax: subtly so, but so . . . and after all that’s been he’ll count it as a blessing.

 _< I’m so sorry.> _In tandem with the motion of his fingertips come the currents through the Force, the grief-choked words, the emotions but half-tempered now: traces of them spilling over, sharp and bright. _< My Padawan, I’ve failed you. I’ve failed so many. Xanatos and everyone he killed. Anakin killed, too . . . the Temple guards and younglings and the crèchelings too and . . . >_

A flash, an image: silver eyes grown matte in death: blood blotted across the largest pool in the Room of a Thousand Fountains: waterlogged robe blossoming about her, a Mon Calamari floating, dead.

Obi-Wan sucks in a breath and lets it go, lets go of the sudden tightness in his throat, the rekindled agony within his heart. Bant Eerin . . . he’d known she died, in theory, but—

_< I’m so sorry.>_

_< It wasn’t your fault, Master . . . >_

Shallow words that will never be enough, no matter how much Obi-Wan wills the strength and truth of them through the Force . . . He considers the irony, of all the blame he pours upon himself, and how the sweetest, strongest medicine he offers to his Master now is something he could never give himself.

Hands slip from hair to still-hunched shoulders, quietly kneading flesh grown soft over the years; such was Qui-Gon’s trust in the Force that laying down his lightsaber meant eschewing training, too . . . and Obi-Wan can’t quite begrudge him that. The man was always a staunch adherent to his convictions with his mind made up; Qui-Gon never did anything halfway, but saw all through to the bitterest or most joyous end . . .

_< And I fail you now, don’t I?>_

Qui-Gon turns, reaches with a scarred hand, thickly-latticed, faint and shining in the dull half-light; he strokes the Jedi Master’s cheek, lingering far longer than need be, soaking in the warmth of skin and the bristles of his beard, before settling a coarse finger against his lips. Instinctively, subconsciously, Obi-Wan presses a kiss there, just at the first knuckle, and then the second—

 _Help_ , say both gestures. _Help_ and _I love you_ and _I need this_ and _Where is life in so much death?_ and _We are luminous beings clothed in crude matter and it’s in this crude matter that we live_ and _For years I’ve wanted this and worried after you and loved you and I will always love you and please, please, just hold this with me—hold this with me because the Order’s shattered and I don’t know how to hold the fragments of the Code and—_

_Please._

* * *

Qui-Gon finds himself lying on the bunk, plasteel rapidly warming beneath his bare skin and body heat. He wonders idly how or when Obi-Wan coaxed him out of his tunic and trousers, but so it is, and sacred: calloused hands are working their way across his flesh—his shoulders, his torso—along his limbs—working gentle motion back into arthritic hands—untangling the knots of pain—

And everywhere those hands wander, oh, are gentle kisses in their wake: chaste and all the more moving for their chastity.

And slowly, softly, after everywhere else—and much time spent tracing idle paths against Qui-Gon’s aquiline face, following the wrinkles like a map—Obi-Wan’s hands slip along the former’s thighs, and up, and with unutterable tenderness begin to work against his quiescent cock. Qui-Gon gasps and shifts into the touch, into the compassion with which nothing needs be said: he is not a young man any more . . . and he knows well that his Padawan wants naught else but this: but Qui-Gon’s greasy hair and unwashed scent and softened but still-needing cock.

There is hesitation with the touch: a subtle moment when lithe fingers caress the flesh and slip down and trace the thatch of hair, the scrotum, before stroking his perineum—and a pause—a gestured questioning—

_< Oh, please. Oh, please—don’t stop.>_

* * *

Obi-Wan’s lips quirk into a smile, quiet wonderment, and he ducks his head to kiss everywhere, to let his tongue tangle with coarse, coarse hair and velvet-soft foreskin and sweet-musk in his nose and a beaded bitterness and such . . . he doesn’t know . . . perhaps it’s peace, in its own way . . . this moment . . . this pleasure that leaves his Master gasping, humming, begging . . . His own trousers are desperately tight, his cock aching, weeping . . . but it doesn’t matter . . . this is his gift to Qui-Gon, solely . . .

One hand still stroking Qui-Gon’s cock he begins his journey elsewhere, tracing trodden paths: the quivering flesh of legs and hips, the rounded belly, the ribs with an ugly scar searing down them and then up to kiss that love-worn face. The motion draws a sudden accidental friction twixt his cock and trousers and his Master’s thigh and his hips buck of their own accord and _oh_ —

Qui-Gon begins to tremble and writhe beneath his touch, sending stars dancing behind Obi-Wan’s eyes, his own body begging for release that’s been denied for all his conscious life, for vows and pride and love and the knowledge that nothing but this moment would ever be enough. And suddenly his hand seems far too impersonal—

He trails kisses down until he can draw his lips across his Master’s still-soft cock, swirling his tongue, tasting, seeking, never taking him into his mouth fully but everywhere, then, everywhere calloused fingertips are dancing with the lightest touch, keeping time with Qui-Gon’s gasping breath.

The orgasm that steals at length upon the older man is gentle, and still, and quiet, half of the body and half something else, transcendent: some strange, strange guise of peace at the last.

* * *

Obi-Wan half-kneels at the edge of the bunk, one foot braced against the floor, the memory of Qui-Gon’s skin and shuddering fresh and burning there against his lips. The hand he’s laid against his Master’s hip is covered by the latter’s own—tracing the tendons and the knuckles there, the swollen veins. For a moment they are still, Qui-Gon’s labored breathing slowing, Obi-Wan fighting for a steady breath, glancing once at Luke, who slumbers on.

* * *

Qui-Gon can feel Obi-Wan’s self-control, like a durasteel chain, winding its way in well-practiced self-denial about the whole of him: oh, life-seeker that he is, life-lover that he is—he’s always been—and yet even now he can’t bring himself to—

But Qui-Gon can see the unmistakable shadow of his erection, straining at his trousers, a dark smear of damp fabric . . .

And with a singular desperation of his own, Qui-Gon wants to feel him. Hold him. If this is the only release that Obi-Wan will find in waking life, after all these years and for all the years to come, oh, Qui-Gon wants to know him thus. If for love is why he’s not even touched himself, then let this, let love, be the answer neither of them dared to seek ’til now.

And the thoughts, the yearning, must carry through the bond because Obi-Wan’s half-checked whimpered breath becomes a moan: low, aching, long-suffering: with nothing short of frantic need he flings his tunic over his head, tears at his trousers with shaking hands—

 _< Oh, _Force. _Oh, Master. I’m so—I’m—oh, I can’t— >_

Qui-Gon reaches out, runs his hands along Obi-Wan’s sides as the smaller man half-crawls to him, tangling their legs—oh, he can feel his Padawan’s cock dripping, trailing there across his skin—the sharp bucking of his hips, again and again—instinct overruling everything—

But still he holds himself half-distant, shaking, each breath a quiet cry that Qui-Gon knows he longs to muffle or bite back for fear of waking Luke but can’t—

_< Here, come here . . . relax . . . >_

Obi-Wan’s weight settles against him, carefully, as if he or both of them will break. Warm skin against skin, hearts pounding out a rapid song, the pulse in their veins setting a staccatoed, frenetic tempo. One hand slips, then, slips from stroking Obi-Wan’s side to rest at his hip; Qui-Gon feels the younger man shift back with a keening cry, the ages-old paradox: wanting more and more and more is at once too much and never enough—

And since he’s never known—

_< It’s alright, Padawan. Just hold on to me. You’ll be alright.>_

Dry lips pressed against his own with searing need, searching, questing, aching: Qui-Gon traces the shape of them with his tongue, feels Obi-Wan’s back arch, feels himself suddenly gripped vicelike in arms that over the years have never lost their strength.

The younger man rocks against him, once, twice, moaning, well beyond hope of keeping silent now: his whole body grows tense, becomes, for however brief a moment, _still_ —and then his cock pulses and he drives forward and “Oh—Master—oh— _oh—!”_ becomes the chant kept in time to the spurted rivulets of cum, hot and thick on Qui-Gon’s skin, the rippled echoes of Obi-Wan’s orgasm through the living Force more than enough to leave Qui-Gon for a second time shuddering in rapture.

* * *

And so, languidly, they move together afterwards: sharing the pleasure that comes in ageless ebb and flow and warmth and closeness: tumescent and quiescent cocks and orgasm and lassitude, finitude and seemingly infinite song without end . . . for as long as Luke lays sleeping.

Qui-Gon welcomes it as refuge, however fleeting, and for the moment loses himself to his Padawan’s embrace, as if Obi-Wan’s Light is enough to protect him—protect them both—and yes, the boy—from all the Darkness. And Obi-Wan wraps his arms all the more tightly about his Master’s frame, holding him and _holding him_ and wishing that he need never let go, but knowing with an aching certitude that this will be for the first and last time in their lives.

* * *

Tatooine. Driving sand and searing suns and weary, worn beings eking out a life, for whatever life it is.

Obi-Wan sets the shuttle down well at the outskirts of Mos Eisley, knowing that its presence will be brief but loathe to attract any attention to Luke—or to himself. True enough they land at night, under the cover of the moons and silence—but no risk is too small to leave to chance. And so darkness, then, or near enough.

_< Wait a moment, Padawan.>_

He turns, pack-laden, Luke swaddled in a sling and cradled close against his chest.

_< Master?>_

From the interior of the shuttle that’s brighter than the planet’s night, Qui-Gon steps with quiet grace down the boarding ramp, setting no more than two feet in the sand: two footprints to mark his return to this forsaken world where all was set in motion . . . as if those moments, those fretful days of uncertainty and games of chance and hope and faith and loss, belonged to other men, with other lives.

 _< Take this.> _Qui-Gon’s hand is warm, the life thrumming through him, the Force beginning at last to coalesce about him as before, as Obi-Wan had always known. And true enough it is that the peace, the healing, is fragile, tenuous at best: perhaps whatever was shared between them, kindled, brought to bear, will still not be Light enough within the Dark . . .

A crystal, green as life, green as his Master’s energy in the wild currents of the Force, is pressed into his palm.

_< But Master—this is—?>_

He glances up, finds Qui-Gon’s face a mask of sadness. It strikes him then that perhaps, to his Master, the lightsaber has become a desecrated weapon . . .

_< For Luke, when the time comes for him to build his own.>_

Would that Qui-Gon knows he carries Anakin's saber in his pack . . . that someday he'll give it to Luke, for whatever strain upon his conscience that might yield, for all the blade's wielder has done . . . But even as he considers this the Force whispers shadowed half-truth, might-yet-be: a young man, black-clad as his father, carrying a verdant blade of light—

 _< Yes, Master.> _Obi-Wan fumbles for a moment with the sling and the folds of his tunic, at last finding the secret pocket just above his heart where rests a river-stone, Force-sensitive; it hums with warmth and light as the kyber crystal’s slipped beside it. Luke coos and reaches for it through the cloth, holding fast with a pudgy fist.

He glances once more at his Master, wishing to say much, knowing how to say very little at all.

_< Where will you go?>_

Qui-Gon tilts his head, scanning the stars, the faintest flicker of an old smile tugging at his lips. _< Where the Force wills me.> _A pause, and a hand is at last laid against Obi-Wan’s shoulder: the gesture worn, familiar, dear. _< No matter what, my Padawan, remember this: there is no death. There is the Force. We _will _meet again, I promise. >_

_But not too soon._

The words Obi-Wan can’t bring himself to say, can’t even whisper there across the bond. He knows where Qui-Gon will go: that he will follow in the wake of Darkness, sowing seeds of Light with quiet hands, though the firmament of his own faith and strength might crack, might shatter. That he will seek out Vader, in due time . . . That his death will come at a crimson blade. Of that much Obi-Wan is sure.

_There is no death . . ._

_< May the Force be with you, Obi-Wan.>_

_< And also with you, Master.>_

He turns as the shuttle’s engines roar and flare; Luke begins to wail, but he finds that his throat is too tight to form words, to form a song, a lullaby, and so he hopes that the motion of their journey to Mos Eisley, unseen past the horizon, will soothe him as the night wears on. He dares not look back to where the shuttle stood, but spares a tear-blurred glance to starry skies, and walks into the desert.

**Author's Note:**

>  **First-time prompts, anyone? :D**  
>  _Feel free to specify if you want something that's rated less than Explicit, by the way._ <3


End file.
